- In response to the call of the National Third-Line Construction, in May 1966, the First Ministry of Machinery Industry of China invested in the construction of Tianshui Bearing Factory, located near Liziyuan, Shiguanzi village of Tianshui County, which is about 60 kilometers from current Tianshui city. The Tianshui Bearing Factory was originally designed by the First Ministry of Machinery of China, and Luoyang Bearing Factory was responsible for its construction, relocation of facilities as well as production. With a factory building area of 18947 square meters, 724 equipment and 1468 employees, the factory was designed to produce 2 million pieces of bearings in 43 varieties of category ”2” and category “7” bearings per year, The total investment was 11.98 million yuan.
- On October 22nd 1966, Tianshui Bearing Factory was renamed as Hailin Bearing Factory（short name: HL Bearings）, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held.
- At the end of 1968, the main workshop of the HL Bearings was basically completed, and the total investment reached 30.29 million yuan. After that, the relocation equipment of Luoyang Bearing Factory and some new equipment arrived and installed one after another, and workers, engineering staff and technicians, as well as the management personnel also came to the factory one after another.
- In May 1969, HL Bearings factory started its full-line trial production. On July 1st, the first batch of “7606” bearings were successfully assembled. In that year, 460 pieces bearings were produced.
- After officially putting into operation in 1970, HL Bearing factory transferred and recruited various personnel from Luoyang Bearing Factory, Lanzhou, Qin’an, Pingliang and Minxian, and also recruited students from Hunan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Xian Jiaotong University, Lanzhou University, Tianjin University, Northwestern University, Hefei University of Technology, Gansu University of Technology, Beijing Institute of Machinery, Shanghai Institute of Machinery, Harbin Institute of Machinery, Shanxi Heavy Machinery Institute, Wuhan Institute of Machinery, and other well-known colleges and universities. After a few years, the total employees of HL bearing factory reached 2600, making HL Bearing Factory the enterprise with the largest number of employees in Tianshui region.
- On November 11, 1970, Hailin Bearing Factory was transferred from the First Ministry of Machinery to the local governmental department, administratively under supervision of Gansu Provincial Bureau of Machinery Industry.
- After 1980, due to the re-adjustment of the national economy, the production of the mechanical products fell to the bottom and bearing products sales encountered big difficulties. To solve the problem, Hailin Bearing Factory began to produce category “0” deep groove ball bearings in the same year and completed a production of the first batch ball bearings 5000 pieces, which expanded the product channel for future development of Hailin Bearing Factory. In the late 1980s, Hailin also developed category “3” spherical roller bearings, so far, HL became a large scale back-boned enterprise in Chinese bearing industry that could produce four categories and more than 2000 sizes of the bearings.